Mental illness

A mental illness is a disorder of the brain that results in a disruption in a person's thinking, feeling, moods, and ability to relate to others. Mental illness is distinct from the legal concepts of sanity and insanity.

Prevalence and diagnosis

According to the 2003 report of the U.S. President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, major mental illness, including clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, when compared with all other diseases (such as cancer and heart disease), is the most common cause of disability in the United States. According to National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), an American advocacy organisation which accepts funding from the pharmaceutical industry, 23% of North American adults will suffer from a clinically diagnosable mental illness in a given year, but less than half of them will suffer symptoms severe enough to disrupt their daily functioning. Approximately 9% to 13% of children under the age of 18 experience serious emotional disturbance with substantial functional impairment; 5% to 9% have serious emotional disturbance with extreme functional impairment due to a mental illness. Many of these young people will recover from their illnesses before reaching adulthood, and go on to lead normal lives uncomplicated by illness.

Related Topics:
2003 - New Freedom Commission on Mental Health - Clinical depression - Bipolar disorder - Schizophrenia - Obsessive-compulsive disorder - Disability - National Alliance for the Mentally Ill

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At the start of the 20th century there were only a dozen recognized mental illnesses. By 1952 there were 192 and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) today lists 374. Depending on perspective, this could be seen as the result of one or more of:

Related Topics:
20th century - 1952 - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition

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• More effective diagnosis and better characterization of mental illness, due to over a century of research in a new field of science and academia;
• A highly increased incidence of mental illness, due to some causative agent such as diet or the ever-increasing stress of everyday life
• An over-medicalisation of human thought processes, and an increasing tendency on the part of mental health experts to label individual "quirks and foibles" as illness.
• Increasing politicization of the DSM, perhaps due in part to the Peter principle, which may allow decision-makers with more discriminating, compartmentailizing thought processes to dominate the higher ranks of the medical establishment.